About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Monday, July 15, 2013

Continuation of the revolution or just an alliance to topple the Muslim Brothers?

Many have been raising questions about 30 June 2013 and the ouster of the Egyptian president Morsi. Was it a genuine continuation of the revolution of 25 January 2011? What to think of the involvemenet of the army? And of elements belonging to the deep state, whicdh was left over from the Mubarak-era? Already al lot has been written about it. Here only some critical voices: 1954: The headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo burns, people set it alight after the announcement that Brothehopod memebers tried to kill Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Reuters:
For Egypt's
military chiefs, the final spur to rebellion came on June 26. That day
top generals met Mohamed Mursi, the country's first democratically
elected president, and spoke bluntly, telling the Islamist leader what
he should say in a major speech he planned as protests against him
intensified around the country."We told him it has to be
short, respond to opposition demands to form a coalition government,
amend the constitution and set a timeframe for the two actions," an
officer present in the room told Reuters. "Yet he came out with a very
long speech that said nothing. That is when we knew he had no intention
of fixing the situation, and we had to prepare for Plan B."Baheyya:
The massive protests of June 30 came in conjunction with a much larger scheme that began very soon after Morsi took office. This long term project by entrenched state elites seeks more than simply ejecting the Muslim Brothers from power, although that’s a highly prized outcome. The overarching goal is to systematically reverse each halting step toward subjecting the state to popular control. As Leon Trotsky wrote long ago, in the aftermath of an uprising state managers will gradually push away the masses from participation in the leadership of the country. Popular depoliticization is the grand strategy. The amazing breakthrough that was the mass mobilization of January-February 2011 shook the grip of the ruling caste on the Egyptian state and toppled its chief, Hosni Mubarak.
But, alas, it did not smash that grip. The web of top military and police officers
and their foreign patrons, the managers of the civil bureaucracy, cultural
media elites, and crony businessmen firmly believe that ruling over Egypt
is their birthright, and its state is their possession.Joseph Massad (Counterpunch):
Ever since Muhammad Mursi was elected president of Egypt
in democratic elections marred by his Mubarakist opponent Ahmad
Shafiq’s electoral corruption and bribes, a coalition of Egyptian
liberals, Nasserists, leftists — including socialists and communists of
varying stripes –and even Salafist and repentant Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
members began to form slowly but steadily, establishing an alliance
with Mubarak’s ruling bourgeoisie and holdover politicians from his
regime to oust him from power, fearing that he and his party were
preparing a “Nazi-like” takeover of the country and destroying its
fledgling democracy.

In Jadaleyya Philip Rizk asks: Is the Egyptian Revolution Dead?:
The short answer is “No.” A longer answer follows. What happened in
Egypt between 30 June and 3 July was not a coup against an elected
government. It was another attempt by the generals to co-opt Egypt’s
January 25 Revolution. The situation’s complexity and its globally and
ideologically charged nature makes it hard to see the forest for the
trees, here is my view on why the revolution is far from over:

Ben Hubbard and David D Kirckpatrick in the New York Times:
The streets seethe with protests and government ministers are on the run
or in jail, but since the military ousted President Mohamed Morsi, life
has somehow gotten better for many people across Egypt: Gas lines have
disappeared, power cuts have stopped and the police have returned to the
street. The apparently miraculous end to the crippling energy shortages, and the
re-emergence of the police, seems to show that the legions of personnel
left in place after former President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011
played a significant role — intentionally or not — in undermining the
overall quality of life under the Islamist administration of Mr. Morsi.

Charles Levinson and Matt Bradley in the Wall Street Journal:
In the months before the military ousted President Mohammed Morsi,
Egypt's top generals met regularly with opposition leaders, often at the
Navy Officers' Club nestled on the Nile.
The message: If the opposition could
put enough protesters in the streets, the military would step in—and
forcibly remove the president.
"It was a simple question the opposition put to the military," said
Ahmed Samih, who is close to several opposition attendees. "Will you be
with us again?" The military said it would. Others familiar with the
meetings described them similarly.
By June 30, millions of Egyptians took to the streets, calling for Mr. Morsi to go. Three days later, the military unseated him. (....)
The secret meetings between the military and secular opposition parties
were key to the political chess game leading to Mr. Morsi's departure.
The meetings represented a strange-bedfellows rapprochement between two
groups long at odds: Egypt's opposition, and the remnants of the Mubarak
regime. Their enmity dates to the 30-year dictatorship of Mr. Mubarak,
which used its security services to quash the opposition.